Latest Articles: Opinions/Editorials
Feast of Fools: How American Democracy Became the Property of a Commercial Oligarchy Post Date: 2012-09-20 17:57:08 by Brian S
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All power corrupts but some must govern. -- John le Carré The ritual performance of the legend of democracy in the autumn of 2012 promises the conspicuous consumption of $5.8 billion, enough money, thank God, to prove that our flag is still there. Forbidden the use of words apt to depress a Q Score or disturb a Gallup poll, the candidates stand as product placements meant to be seen instead of heard, their quality to be inferred from the cost of their manufacture. The sponsors of the event, generous to a fault but careful to remain anonymous, dress it up with the bursting in air of star-spangled photo ops, abundant assortments of multiflavored sound bites, and the candidates so ...
The Real Mitt Revealed Post Date: 2012-09-18 16:47:41 by Brian S
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This video is significant in two ways. First are the distortions. Romney says 47 percent of Americans dont pay income taxes. Thats literally true, except its misleading because it includes every retiree who hasnt enough income to pay income taxes (most retirees), every poor and lower-income person who doesnt have enough income to pay, and a few multi-millionaires (perhaps like Romney himself we dont know because he wont release his tax returns), who dont pay because of tax loopholes and tax-avoidance schemes. Moreover, just about all working Americans, regardless of income, pay federal payroll taxes. Everyone pays state and local sales ...
Thurston Howell Romney Post Date: 2012-09-18 10:24:46 by Brian S
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In 1980, about 30 percent of Americans received some form of government benefits. Today, as Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute has pointed out, about 49 percent do. In 1960, government transfers to individuals totaled $24 billion. By 2010, that total was 100 times as large. Even after adjusting for inflation, entitlement transfers to individuals have grown by more than 700 percent over the last 50 years. This spending surge, Eberstadt notes, has increased faster under Republican administrations than Democratic ones. There are sensible conclusions to be drawn from these facts. You could say that the entitlement state is growing at an unsustainable rate and will ...
Today, Mitt Romney Lost the Election Post Date: 2012-09-17 23:23:32 by Brian S
32 Comments
You can mark my prediction now: A secret recording from a closed-door Mitt Romney fundraiser, released today by David Corn at Mother Jones, has killed Mitt Romney's campaign for president. On the tape, Romney explains that his electoral strategy involves writing off nearly half the country as unmoveable Obama voters. As Romney explains, 47 percent of Americans "believe that they are victims." He laments: "I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." So what's the upshot? "My job is not to worry about those people," he says. He also notes, describing President Obama's base, "These are people ...
"Pants On Fire.": Mitt Romney's Contortion Of The Truth Post Date: 2012-09-17 13:31:23 by Brian S
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All presidential campaigns fashion narratives in order to tell the most appealing story about their own candidate and the least appealing one about their opponents. After all, as the saying goes, politics ain't bean bag. And the Obama campaign has certainly engaged in its share of mudslinging, spin and distortion. But Mitt Romney's campaign is history-making in its assault on the truth. Washington Post writer Greg Sargent has said that the Romney campaign "has decided that there is literally no set of boundaries or standards it needs to follow when it comes to the veracity of the core assertions at the heart of its entire argument." Among seemingly countless examples, ...
Ron Paul: Consequences of an Interventionist Foreign Policy Post Date: 2012-09-17 12:27:15 by Brian S
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The attack on the US consulate in Libya and the killing of the US Ambassador and several aides is another tragic example of how our interventionist foreign policy undermines our national security. The more the US tries to control the rest of the world, either by democracy promotion, aid to foreign governments, or by bombs, the more events spin out of control into chaos, unintended consequences, and blowback. Unfortunately, what we saw in Libya last week is nothing new. In 1980s Afghanistan, the US supported Islamic radicals in their efforts to expel the invading Soviet military. These radicals became what is known to be al-Qaeda, and our one-times allies turned on us most spectacularly on ...
Did Hillary Clinton kill Ambassador Christopher Stevens? Post Date: 2012-09-16 19:40:21 by whyofcourse
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Did Hillary Clinton kill Ambassador Christopher Stevens?http://www.barenakedislam.com/2012/09/15/did-hillary-clinton-kill-ambassador-christopher-stevensFox News military analyst Colonel David Hunt laid the blame for the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans at the Benghazi, Libya American mission on Hillary Clinton and the State Department.The State Department just allowed our guys to get killed. If you approve no bullets in guns for the mission security guards and an outhouse for a mission, youre inviting it, said Col Hunt.Colonel Hunt also said, The American mission at Benghazi was like a cardboard building, there wasnt even bullet ...
Israeli Fallout Post Date: 2012-09-15 11:25:12 by Brian S
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By ERIC L. LEWISIt should go without saying, but apparently does not, that the tragic crisis unfolding in the Middle East calls for sober statesmanship rather than political posturing. The jihadist murder of the American ambassador to a newly liberated Libya; the carnage unleashed by the Assad regime on the Syrian people; the emergence of a Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt; the conundrum of Iranian nuclear ambitions the region presents decades worth of complex challenges telescoped into real time.Responding to these challenges, Mitt Romney mixes crude political theater with neocon bromides. Attacking President Obama for supposedly apologizing to Islamic radicals, he appears unable ...
Mitt Romney’s Total Neocon Meltdown Post Date: 2012-09-14 12:38:43 by Brian S
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We know that we saw something appalling yesterday, in Mitt Romneys response to the violence in Cairo and Benghazi, but lets not lose sight of the fact that were witnessing something historic too. This isnt simply the end of the Republican Partys decades-long political advantage on foreign policy that were observing. Rather, we are simultaneously able to see how the party is reacting to and dealing with the disappearance of that advantage. Its like those villains in the movies who not only are dying, but who register on their face that they cant comprehend theyre dying, that Hell has finally called their malevolent number, like Julia ...
Buchanan: Is It Time To Come Home? Post Date: 2012-09-14 11:52:11 by Brian S
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Is it not long past time to do a cost-benefit analysis of our involvement in the Middle and Near East? In this brief century alone, we have fought the two longest wars in our history there, put our full moral authority behind an Arab Spring that brought down allies in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, and provided the air power that saved Benghazi and brought down Moammar Gadhafi. Yet this week U.S. embassies were under siege in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen, and U.S. diplomats were massacred in Benghazi. The cost of our two wars is 6,500 dead, 40,000 wounded and $2 trillion piled onto a national debt that is $16 trillion, larger than the entire U.S. economy. And what in heavens ...
The Mitt Mirage Post Date: 2012-09-13 11:58:16 by Brian S
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I first met Mitt Romney in 2005. I was very impressed. I described him in this magazine as "informal, conversational, enthusiastic and speedy." Mitt Romney? Yes, indeed. But then, we were talking about something he really believed in, or seemed to: his universal health care plan for Massachusetts, which included an individual mandate--an idea I'd admired since it was proposed by Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation in 1989. Romney's plan wasn't the Full Butler, which would eliminate the deductibility of employer-donated health care benefits. But it was a huge step in the right direction, and Romney had mastered every detail of it. He seemed a near Clintonian policy ...
Romney Pulls a Palin at a NASCAR Race! Post Date: 2012-09-09 17:47:10 by Ferret Mike
8 Comments
I'm gonna miss Mittens. The comic relief he's provided has been priceless. It's been one gaffe after another. And you'd think his incompetent staff would have learned by now, but nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Pardon me, do you have some Grey Poupon? Mittens spent the afternoon desperately trying to act like a guy you'd like to have a non-alcoholic beer with, handing out FREE hot dogs at a NASCAR race in Richmond, Virginia. If you remember. earlier this year, Romney really screwed up, insulting working class NASCAR fans by making fun of their poor rain jackets and saying he didn't follow NASCAR but had dear friends who owned NASCAR racing teams. A competent ...
Man threatened to kill President during DNC (being held at a federal detention center) Post Date: 2012-09-07 20:06:55 by Hondo68
7 Comments
A Charlotte man is behind bars after investigators say he threatened to kill President Obama during the Democratic National Convention. Investigators told WBTV that Donte Jarmar Sims, 21, was arrested on Wednesday, charged in a felony criminal complaint accusing him of threatening the president's life. Friday, WBTV learned Sims is scheduled to be in federal magistrate's court in Charlotte Tuesday morning. The threats were done via Sims' Twitter account on Monday morning. The first tweet was sent out at 10:06 a.m. on Monday when Sims tweeted, "Well Ima Assassinate president Obama this evening !... Gotta get this monkey off my chest while he's in town." "Ima ...
Notice how the phrase "Christan Right" is used as a derogatory term Post Date: 2012-09-04 16:34:36 by whyofcourse
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How about the phrase "COMMUNIST LEFT"?
Obama Just Another Ivy League A--hole Post Date: 2012-09-03 18:11:39 by Hondo68
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John Cusack: 'Is Obama Just Another Ivy League A--hole?' "Is the President just another Ivy League A--hole shredding civil liberties and due process and sending people to die in some s--thole for purely political reasons?" So asked perilously liberal actor John Cusack Saturday in an article published by Truthout: Mr. Obama, the Christian president with the Muslim-sounding name, would heed the admonitions of neither religion's prophets about making war and do what no empire or leader, including Alexander the Great, could do: he would, he assured us "get the job done in Afghanistan." And so we have our democratic president receiving the Nobel Peace Prize as ...
21 Ways Rich People Think Differently Post Date: 2012-09-02 22:32:48 by A K A Stone
2 Comments
World's richest woman Gina Rinehart is enduring a media firestorm over an article in which she takes the "jealous" middle class to task for "drinking, or smoking and socializing" rather than working to earn their own fortune. What if she has a point? Steve Siebold, author of "How Rich People Think," spent nearly three decades interviewing millionaires around the world to find out what separates them from everyone else. It had little to do with money itself, he told Business Insider. It was about their mentality. "[The middle class] tells people to be happy with what they have," he said. "And on the whole, most people are steeped in fear ...
Petition to name the next carrier The USS Enterprise Post Date: 2012-09-02 16:43:50 by sneakypete
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Designate the next US Navy nuclear powered Aircraft Carrier, CVN-79 as the USS Enterprise Author: n/a Send To: Secretary of the Navy and the US Congress Sponsored By: Original petition supported by uS Naval INstitute, US Navy veterans, Tailhook and others More Info at: www.petitiononline.com /CVN79ENT/petition.html +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Click for Full Text!
Poster Comment:A petition by the people of the United States of America, and particularly by US Navy veterans and their familes, to the Secretary of the Navy and to the US Congress to name the next nuclear powered aircraft carrier, CVN-79, the USS Enterprise. The current ...
The Medicare Killers Post Date: 2012-09-02 15:35:42 by Brian S
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Paul Ryans speech Wednesday night may have accomplished one good thing: It finally may have dispelled the myth that he is a Serious, Honest Conservative. Indeed, Mr. Ryans brazen dishonesty left even his critics breathless. Some of his fibs were trivial but telling, like his suggestion that President Obama is responsible for a closed auto plant in his hometown, even though the plant closed before Mr. Obama took office. Others were infuriating, like his sanctimonious declaration that the truest measure of any society is how it treats those who cannot defend or care for themselves. This from a man proposing savage cuts in Medicaid, which would cause tens of millions ...
An Infantilizing Speech Post Date: 2012-09-01 22:21:28 by We The People
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Maybe I am getting older and crankier, but that struck me as an exceptionally infantilizing speech that Mitt Romney just gave, politically speaking. There were good bits in it, particularly in the soft-focus autobiographical stuff. He actually sounded like he choked up talking about missing the days when theyd wake up to find a pile of kids in their bedroom. He got a genuine laugh from a genuine joke. Ive never cared much whether Romney seems authentic or genuine because those qualities in a politician are faked what youre seeing is the ability to seem genuine, seem authentic. If Romney lacks those qualities, they have ...
Homeland Security’s Deadly Ammo Plan Post Date: 2012-08-29 21:42:33 by whyofcourse
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Speaking of Abortion... Post Date: 2012-08-27 19:58:21 by jwpegler
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Todd Akin's misguided and incorrect statements about "legitimate rape" has stirred up yet another hornet's nest about America's currently longest lasting polarizing issue -- abortion. We are fortunate today to have much more medical evidence about what really happens in the womb than we had when the Supreme Court overreached and set abortion policy in stone in 1973. Our current medical understanding demonstrates that both sides are incorrect of their view of how a pregnancy starts and how life develops. A pregnancy occurs when a fertilized egg attaches itself to the uterine wall. This happens about the 6th day after fertilization. However, half of fertilized eggs ...
Why, As A Conservative, I Don't Hold Out Much Hope For Romney/Ryan Post Date: 2012-08-26 17:46:12 by We The People
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I know, I know, it isn't considered couth to point out the truth about the candidates the GOP opts to run for President. Especially when the "option" is a hard core Marxist like Barack Obama. GOP loyalists have all sorts of wacky excuses to dismiss the truth about their candidates. For example, when I point out that Mitt Romney supports several socialist ideas and governed as a moderate while in Massachusetts, I get the same, tired, excuse that he was just being a "realist". He was governing a "blue state" after all, they say. Of course, my response to that claim is, ok, IF Mitt Romney wins in November BUT in two years Democrats retake the House and Senate ...
Rep. Paul Ryan Isn’t The Savior We Need Post Date: 2012-08-26 17:42:35 by We The People
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Unquiver your arrows all you GOP partisans and blind Republican loyalists! For I am here for you to take shots at. I am painting a big, red bulls-eye on myself for you to attack because I am here to tell you something you do not want to hear; the truth. By now we are all well aware of Representative Paul Ryans proposed budget for 2012. We are also all aware of the talking points, especially the one where it would shave over six trillion dollars of federal spending over the next ten years. Those talking points led the American Spectators Peter Ferrara to call the Ryan proposal full of, Real, Powerful Spending Cuts[1]. But fortunately even Mr. Ferrara, sucked in by ...
A Grand Old Party In Panic Post Date: 2012-08-24 12:04:16 by Brian S
4 Comments
Whittaker Chambers said that the great failing of American conservatives is they do not retrieve their wounded. He had it right, as Todd Akin can testify. In an interview that aired last Sunday, Akin, the Republican candidate for Senate in Missouri, was asked whether he opposed abortions for women who had been raped. Akins reply: From what I understand from doctors, thats really rare.
If its a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down
. But lets assume that maybe that didnt work or something. I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be on the rapist and ...
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